Wet chemical etching of semipolar GaN planes to obtain brighter and cost-competitive light emitters

Abstract

Spotlight on etching: (11-22) semipolar GaN plane light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are demonstrated using a wet-etching process. A trigonal prism cell structure with a (0001) c plane and nnn{10-10} m planes is formed after KOH wet etching, and leads to a better ohmic contact and enhanced light extraction. LEDs fabricated by wet etching show excellent output performance 1.89 times higher than that of the reference LEDs.

Keywords: extraction efficiencies; light emitting diodes; ohmic contacts; semipolar GaN planes; wet etching.